Opinion in brief: The more things change...

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Is the GOP’s supply of white voters running low? Does that explain how the party snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the presidential election? You could easily get such an impression from a lot of post-election analysis, glum and gleeful. (Glum on the part of Republicans, gleeful on the part of Democrats.)

The GOP has been overtaken by demographics, said the popular-wisdom commentary. The commentary emphasized the upsurge in the minority electorate, especially the Latino portion thereof. The GOP, it was said in a lamenting (or snickering) tone has become the PWG. Party of White Guys. And, ipso facto, the party is destined to go the way of the Studebaker.

That fate may prove true for the GOP but not due to demographics, according to LaSalle University sociologist Charles A. Gallagher. In the Philadelphia Inquirer he noted recently:

— That non-Hispanic whites account for 64 percent of the population. And the number goes up to 74 percent if you add Latinos who mark the “white” box on the census form.

— That this number will “remain stable or grow” because among Latinos who marry across the racial divide, 81 percent got hitched to a partner who is white, indicating that the offspring are likely also to mark the “white” box.

The professor seemed not to be presenting this as good or bad news, just as fact. He went on to note something else not much changed: The House is 83 percent white, the Senate 96 percent white, and 95 percent of the board positions at Fortune 500 companies are filled by white men.

Did we just hear a great sigh of relief emanate from the plush leather chairs and reverberate through the wood-panelled rooms of the Union Club?